Article published on 8 March 2018
In honour of International Women’s Day we would like to pay tribute to Marielle Bourreau, Manager of the Proludic Design and Construction Department in France.
Marielle has been designing Proludic’s playground products for 20 years, with an almost maternal approach. To her mind, the design must not be a purely rational thought process, but also an alchemy between the initial drawing and the end product. In the final design stages, she is only satisfied when she feels that the product has a soul, and that it’s warmth will be felt by the children playing on it. Proludic’s motto “Nothing is Impossible” is perfectly suited to Marielle’s eagerness to push the product design and technical boundaries and move out of the comfort zone.
As a pragmatic person, Marielle had no desire to design a product without knowing how it was made, so her initial studies were in mechanical engineering. There, she was one of three girls studying with a group of one hundred boys and so had to prove her technical ability in order to be credible in such a masculine environment.
Once armed with this mechanical knowledge, she decided to approach the more aesthetic side of product design, spending several years at the reputable Decorative Arts School in Paris (ENSAD).
Marielle took up her first position at PICHARD-BALME S.A., Saumur, which designs and produces advertising items, medals and costume jewellery. She was soon asked to design and produce PICHARD-BALME’s “Atalante” costume jewellery range, while also producing 2 jewellery collections per year for Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Rochas…
Working directly with the fashion house stylists, her role was to check the stylists’ designs and provide feedback on the potential technical constraints, before final validation and production of the pieces according to the stylists’ specifications.
After six years with PICHARD-BALME, Marielle wished to move on to a post with more challenging production constraints. During her studies, she had carried out a design project for a children’s playground at the “Necker Hospital” in Paris, and with this focus in mind, she sent a job application to Proludic S.A.S in Vouvray, and the rest is history…
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